Single carrier FDMA has been selected as the uplink multiple access scheme for the E-UTRA air interface currently being studied in 3GPP (which is a standard based collaboration looking at the future evolution of third generation mobile telecommunication systems). Under the E-UTRA system, a base station which communicates with a number of mobile telephones allocates the total amount of time/frequency resource (depending on bandwidth) among as many simultaneous users as possible, in order to enable efficient and fast link adaptation and to attain maximum multi-user diversity gain. The resource allocated to each mobile telephone is based on the instantaneous channel conditions between the mobile telephone and the base station and is informed through a control channel monitored by the mobile telephone.
A computationally efficient mechanism is required for allocating resources in the uplink in order to maximise the usage of the uplink.